Farid Hafez tells Al Jazeera the accusations towards him aimed to ‘silence’ critics of Austria’s anti-Muslim measures.
“Terrorism” prices towards an Austrian educational, Farid Hafez, have been dropped after an Al Jazeera documentary revealed the case was based mostly on false proof and fabricated accusations.
In an interview with Al Jazeera, Hafez mentioned he was relieved to be not residing in “limbo” greater than two years after officers barged into his two-storey house and pointed their weapons at him, his spouse and two youngsters.
“I by no means knew if the judges would go forward and actually file prices, which I didn’t imagine [they would] at any time limit,” he mentioned. “However I might additionally not imagine that such a raid might occur.”
Hafez is finest recognized for an annual report on European Islamophobia and is without doubt one of the founders of the Austrian Muslim Youth Affiliation.
Trying again, the political scientist mentioned the accusations raised towards him have been “insane” and got here “out of the blue”.
Hafez’s condominium was one amongst some 60 houses of Muslim activists and teachers raided in November 2020 as a part of what Austria’s inside minister referred to as “Operation Luxor”.
The search warrant alleged that Hafez – who’s of Egyptian origin – wished to destroy Egypt and Israel and set up a worldwide Islamic caliphate with Jerusalem as its capital.
Along with “supporting terrorism”, police accused him of crimes together with “hostility to the state” and “cash laundering”.
Hafez’s checking account was frozen, leaving him unable to pay attorneys or restore the injury brought on throughout the raid.
The tutorial, who has since relocated to the USA to grow to be a professor at Georgetown College, mentioned many amongst these focused by the asset freezes had their lives upended by the lack of monetary safety.
Amongst them have been detractors of the Egyptian authorities in addition to educational figures who expressed criticism of Austrian insurance policies seen as discriminatory to the Muslim neighborhood, together with the closure of mosques and a ban on the hijab.
Hafez mentioned his research of Islamophobia was “reframed” and solid as a “type of terrorism”.
The costs raised have been subsequently insubstantial, however he believes constructing a powerful case was by no means the intention.
“The concept was mainly to intimidate and silence any type of critique vis-a-vis the Austrian discrimination towards Muslim individuals,” Hafez mentioned.
Al Jazeera’s movie Austria’s Operation Luxor, launched in Might 2022, examined what occurred on November 9, 2020, when law enforcement officials raided Muslim houses and organisations throughout Austria in what was claimed to be an vital “anti-terrorist” operation.
In an opinion piece for Al Jazeera in June 2021, Hafez argued that these raids have been a telling signal of the extent to which the Austrian authorities had recognized “political Islam” as a risk to the nation.
Within the course of, he mentioned, the Austrian authorities have been concentrating on actual and imagined Muslim Brotherhood members.
“The federal government’s anti-Muslim insurance policies, and significantly the drive towards ‘political Islam’ and the ‘Muslim Brotherhood’ in Austria are troubling as they’ll have devastating penalties for the Muslim civil society and human rights teams at the moment difficult Islamophobia in Europe,” he wrote.